.\" This file is derived from unlink.2, which has the following copyright:
.\"
.\" This manpage is Copyright (C) 1992 Drew Eckhardt;
.\"             and Copyright (C) 1993 Ian Jackson.
.\"
.\" Edited into remove.3 shape by:
.\" Graeme W. Wilford (G.Wilford@ee.surrey.ac.uk) on 13th July 1994
.\"
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.\" manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
.\" preserved on all copies.
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.\" manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
.\" entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
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.\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date.  The author(s) assume no
.\" responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from
.\" the use of the information contained herein.  The author(s) may not
.\" have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual,
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.\" the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work.
.\" %%%LICENSE_END
.\"
.TH REMOVE 3 2021-03-22 "GNU" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
remove \- remove a file or directory
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.B #include <stdio.h>
.PP
.BI "int remove(const char *" pathname );
.fi
.SH DESCRIPTION
.BR remove ()
deletes a name from the filesystem.
It calls
.BR unlink (2)
for files, and
.BR rmdir (2)
for directories.
.PP
If the removed name was the
last link to a file and no processes have the file open, the file is
deleted and the space it was using is made available for reuse.
.PP
If the name was the last link to a file,
but any processes still have the file open,
the file will remain in existence until the last file
descriptor referring to it is closed.
.PP
If the name referred to a symbolic link, the link is removed.
.PP
If the name referred to a socket, FIFO, or device, the name is removed,
but processes which have the object open may continue to use it.
.SH RETURN VALUE
On success, zero is returned.
On error, \-1 is returned, and
.I errno
is set to indicate the error.
.SH ERRORS
The errors that occur are those for
.BR unlink (2)
and
.BR rmdir (2).
.SH ATTRIBUTES
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see
.BR attributes (7).
.ad l
.nh
.TS
allbox;
lbx lb lb
l l l.
Interface	Attribute	Value
T{
.BR remove ()
T}	Thread safety	MT-Safe
.TE
.hy
.ad
.sp 1
.SH CONFORMING TO
POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, C89, C99, 4.3BSD.
.\" .SH NOTES
.\" Under libc4 and libc5,
.\" .BR remove ()
.\" was an alias for
.\" .BR unlink (2)
.\" (and hence would not remove directories).
.SH BUGS
Infelicities in the protocol underlying NFS can cause the unexpected
disappearance of files which are still being used.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR rm (1),
.BR unlink (1),
.BR link (2),
.BR mknod (2),
.BR open (2),
.BR rename (2),
.BR rmdir (2),
.BR unlink (2),
.BR mkfifo (3),
.BR symlink (7)
.SH COLOPHON
This page is part of release 5.13 of the Linux
.I man-pages
project.
A description of the project,
information about reporting bugs,
and the latest version of this page,
can be found at
\%https://www.kernel.org/doc/man\-pages/.
